So, I'm at it again

Full disclosure....
This depression thing is really difficult. It's almost 1:30 AM as I'm writing this. I've been looking for work, trying  to re-brand myself, a total image makeover. Isn't it funny how we can really never be happy with ourselves? Well, maybe you are.

Re-invention. I've been scouring so many artist's gateways and networking sites it's tiring. I've gone to this website to get noticed. You know, put my name "out there." I almost feel like this kind of endeavor is like looking around in a cave that's pitch black. Have you ever been in one? I have. Nothing travels in there. The air is damp and musty. Guano can be everywhere. And I'm shouting at the top of my lungs just trying to get someone to notice. It's tiring. Then there's this one. It's for contract work for creatives. Gosh. Am I creative?

I've been in the construction industry for my entire adult working life. My father was a general contractor. He was a good, decent, God-fearing man who read his Bible every night before going to bed. He built a business by building homes. I worked with him first. There were days when I hated it. I wanted to be painting or drawing, or something. I felt like life was holding me back. Funny, I still find myself thinking that from time to time. Not sure what to do, who I am, what I was made for....

I miss my dad. Maybe I haven't had enough coffee.

The painting you see below is from a year previous. I've debated posting it because it was during a particularly low point when I was in the middle of a depressive episode and all I wanted to do was hide. Still not sure if sharing it will be beneficial to anybody. Someone who had seen it commented that it was "compelling."

Self-Portrait 2010

It's almost 2:00 AM. I'm going to bed.

10 Seconds to Obedience

The 10 Second Rule, by Clare Degraaf is an interesting read. Received it in the mail a couple of weeks back from our homeschooling curriculum company and it has challenge some assumptions I have had about following God's will. That's because I'm indecisive. And so in my indecision I really make a decision: "I'm not going to do anything." So, I've got this really long string of "do-nothings" to my credit that have made my account in my obedience chart a negative.  OK, OK. I know some members of my vast reading public, who are Christian, will read that and think, "This sounds like some works trip." (For those of you who don't know, works refers to this idea that a person can earn their salvation--it's like do good and get paid back eternal life)

Let me explain what I mean. Last night I was talking with friends about a passage in the Bible, in particular James' letter, chapter two.  "You see," he wrote, "a person is justified by works and not by faith alone." Now that's an interesting statement.

"Really, James. You don't mean that, do you?" I ask.

"Why wouldn't I mean that," he replies. "Isn't that what I wrote."

"Hmm..."

"Well, think about it this way." (Here's the part where my sanctified imagination kind of takes over) "You see, There was this harlot named Rahab. She didn't dilly-dally. When the spies left her apartment, she immediately put out that red chord outside her window. Don't you also think that the people who knew her--thinking about the prostitute thing, here--probably wondered what she was doing hanging a red chord out her window which happened to be on the outside of the city wall? She did. She was acting immediately because of this knowledge that something was about to happen and it would effect the rest of her life."

I thought, "Well, yeah. It did, didn't it?" The story goes that "chance" encounter with two spies altered the course of history. Jesus who was also called the Messiah was a direct descendant. Amazing. Amazing God.

The other thing is, faith and works go together like peanut butter & jelly, or chocolate and peanut butter, or bacon and eggs, or Starsky & Hutch, or...sorry out of similes. The idea is that of telios or completion. Think about Adam without Eve. Faith and Works are friends, true friends. Faith by itself is "useless" (ESV), or "dead" (KJV). It's not really faith at all, right?

But then some may ask, "Dave, What about the thief on the cross? He didn't 'do' anything. And according to your definition here, he didn't really have faith."

One answer is: he did have "works." And I believe that it is true because he did challenge the other thief on the cross (Luke 23:39-43). No matter the time and location faith has to have feet. So many of us forget that. I do, for sure. I very often choose to forget to love my wife--more than tell her, "I love you."

I'm understanding this more and more. I can say I believe in one thing and everything else I do screams more loudly that I don't really believe in that at all. Oh God, help me!

So, I guess what I'm trying to point out is that I need to be more "impulsive" in doing good for others. According to Graaf that is how you grow in obedience and faith at the same time.

Is that Me?

I forgotten where I've placed my keys before. Frustrating, because it usually happens when I'm in a hurry to get somewhere. Or, my children (most notably our toddler who is two now) takes my keys to play with them. Don't worry, it's not just my keys. No, no. It's my cell phone, loose change, our real phone, my wife's keys, or glasses, or that special pen that has to stay in my journal because if I don't have it I can't possibly put any thoughts on paper--the key to my sanity--oh, where was I? Yes, keys.

I couldn't remember my blog address this morning. Panic. I've got to write. My muse in nudging me. No problem. I'll Google my name. And there. For the first time I see the name of my blog on the top of a search list. Sweet.The internet is amazing. Now I think my blog has something to say. I am a voice in this digital community. I am Me.

Who am I? Steelie-Dave, Fly Fishing Guy.

Still don't know where my keys are though.

Not the reason I fly fish. Thought it was funny though.

Check this out

I like really good guitar music. Something about that acoustic axe in the hands of a professional is something else. These guys have got the stuff. Hope you enjoy.

The Dark Side

Ok.

I don't post as often as I would like. Truthfully, I have very little to say. But when the muse comes it seems that I can have diarrhea of the mouth. Or I can meander without any stringing together of any kind of thoughts (like that last sentence).

Now then, why would people want to share the deepest darkest sides of themselves on the internet for all to see? I can think of a couple of reasons off the top of my head. One of them is that they're lonely. These people spend a lot of time alone, they're perhaps unmarried, don't really feel like they contribute to life in their immediate reality. Perhaps that is what drives them to the internet.

Others really want to connect. They value other people. Or they miss friends from years ago. Social networks provide a great place to do that.

So, both have elements of loneliness. Both are attempts at connecting. Connecting. There is a contemporary word. It suggests being joined to something. Internet. People. God. Ideas, dreams, goals. We all have a need to connect, right.

I've learned and have come to believe that there are four very important areas we all need to connect. We need to connect to:

MYSELF--my thoughts, feelings, wants needs. Recognizing, owning, accepting what it is like to be me.
THE TRUTH--What is real. Beyond just my perspective, bigger than me. It's objective, can be seen by others.
SAFE OTHER--could be a spouse or a friend. But that "other" is available at this moment and vulnerable at this moment.
GOD--and here it is the fact that there can be relationship. God is always available. God is always vulnerable. What does that look like? As a Christian I see God's vulnerability in Jesus because Jesus came to love and was rejected by men. They hung him on a cross!

That's what I think about. I have also been thinking about shame and connectedness. Shame is this negative, sapping energy that many of us may feel sometimes crippling us so we give love or receive it. I know I do. I feel it a lot. I feel it because of a "disconnectedness" with those things above. Shame wants to hide, cover up, run away. All of those things I've done. Not vulnerable with others. I hide on the internet by creating a persona of what I want people to think about me, etc. Or perhaps life is too complicated. I didn't sign up for this. My marriage is far too difficult. My kids are disappointing me. It doesn't matter really. The fact is there is a disconnect somewhere. It's important for us to find it and fix it, or at least respond to it. Sometimes we can't fix it. How many of us try? We try to atone for wrongs we have committed--and that is definitely appropriate at times. Or we try to perform some penance that will assuage our consciences. But the truth is a clean conscience doesn't really occur until some sort approach occurs. Biblically, this begins with confession. A simple word meaning, "saying the same thing as."

There is good shame and bad shame. When we do real wrong we need to be ashamed. But we also need to go onto real absolution. Bad shame is when we seek someone's forgiveness and we don't receive it.

That makes me think again about the story of Adam's fall. He and the woman (that's how the Bible refers to her in the beginning). It was the cool of the morning when they (Adam and his wife) heard the sound of the LORD GOD in the garden and they hid themselves. Why? Because they did something that God had forbidden. Originally they were naked and not ashamed of their nakedness--some commentators point out was because they were "clothed" with innocence and the glory of God. When they sinned their eyes were opened and they hid themselves. From each other? Possibly. From God? Definitely. So they sewed some fig leave together to cover their "loins," to cover their nakedness. They had real shame. They sinned against God, with whom they were in relationship with. See, the point is they were disconnected from God and from each other. This is true in how we see Adam and his wife respond to God's inquiry, "Who told you that you were naked?" Adam blamed his wife (nothing much has changed about that) and the woman admitted that she was deceived by the serpent. The rest of the story accounts God's judgment of the man his wife and creation (you can read the full account in Genesis 2 and three). So that's why things are as they are, right? It's a bad world and we just have to get along with it.

Well, not so fast. You see, one very important detail is that God had to "fashion" skins to cover their nakedness. There are a couple of things to remember here. Adam's attempts to cover his nakedness, while sufficient for Adam, were inadequate for God. Simply, sin could only be atoned for through the death of another not in the sewing together of some fig leaves. Although Scripture is silent about the event, in all likelihood, both Adam and Eve watched the LORD GOD take the life of another animal (in this case a lamb) and take the skin of that animal to provide for them clothing. Again, theologians refer to this as a type. It is the antecedent of what was to come--Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. In other words, God atoned for their sin. The offended took steps to love and forgive those who created the offense--can you imagine the looks on their faces when they saw this new side of God's glory? Second, this would be the foundation upon which Adam and Eve were to build their future lives together. We don't know how often they were to perform this ritual but we do know they told it to their first children, Cain and Abel and they probably performed it regularly (because we all know what people are like).

So then, the question is are you connected? If you are disconnected how do you get reconnected? Does the internet really connect us? That connection is false. It occurs through bits of data carried along a phone line or through a cable buried in the ground. It's electrical and part of the physics and chemistry of this natural world. It isn't true in that it is not ultimately satisfying. True and ultimate connectedness occurs with God, ourselves and with other human beings. God has provided a way to do that. That is the ultimate reason that I am writing this post. I share this because I believe these things to be true. I believe that I have connected with God through His only Son Jesus Christ. And if you are reading this post then He is also inviting you into that same connectedness. Don't hesitate. Really think about what is written here.

I don't think I understand all things very well. Very imperfectly definitely. But I do "get" this.

John Piper interviews Rick Warren

Not having come from a Baptist background (I was raised in Pentecostalism), my circle has expanded quite a bit. I found this interview on a link at the Gospel Coalition's website between Piper and Warren. It's long but it's very interesting. Piper and Warren are both heavyweights in the evangelical world.

Warren has come under a lot of criticism lately from evangelicals because of, I believe, his environmentalist stance and his continuing dialog with other religious groups. Hope that's not oversimplifying matters. Piper's purpose, of course is to clarify Warren's doctrinal positions. Both Warren and Piper are Baptists.

The Gospel Coalition website is a great resource. I recommend it as well.

My Place In Joplin, Missouri

OK, this has been the coolest Spring in many years--at least from what the locals have told me. Like many Americans, I have to say my lawn looks really green this year. I've done the weed & feed thing and now I can sit back and enjoy it, right?

Last Sunday evening, May 22 to be exact, the city where I lived with my wife for 12 years, Joplin, Missouri, was hit by an F5 tornado. It was one of the worst twisters ever recorded. Nearly two hundred dead, many more are still reported missing. 30-40% of the city is simply gone. I'm very sad.

I grew up about twenty minutes south of there in the small town of Neosho. There are around 10,000 living and that number hasn't really changed for years. We moved there in 1973 from Modesto, California. We moved there just before another twister ravaged the town in the Spring. I remember the sounds vividly. I sat with my mom and dad and baby brother along with an aunt and uncle and cousins in a basement garage inside a station wagon. It doesn't haunt me, per se, but I still remember it vividly--we had a very old oak tree absolutely plucked up by its roots and tossed over like a child's toy. We moved to Montana not too long after that. That's another story. I moved to Joplin after my wife and I were married. As I told some others, you my leave Joplin, but Joplin never leaves you.

The night after the storm we frantically tried getting hold of our friends, looking at Facebook--anything we could do to make sure that they were all right. All the time we kept looking at images of our destroyed neighborhood. One family that we are very close to, in fact they had just left our lovely state a week before, survived the storm inside a closet while their home just blew away. Another friend--single mother--barely made it to the bottom floor of her apartment building before it was whisked away by that hammer from the sky. And yet another family's son was at Home Depot when the storm smashed into it. They're all alive, thank God.

We lived a few blocks north east of St. John's hospital. In fact if you were to go onto Google Earth you can still see the truck I owned at the time that someone surreptitiously took a picture of our home--that freaks me out, too. But that is another story in itself.

If it helps put perspective on how these catastrophes can shape us, I really wanted to share about our neighborhood. We lived on 22nd and Moffett, right on the corner. We had three beautiful magnolia trees in our front yard. My wife gave birth to two of our children there. I watched my oldest daughter move from infancy to a lovely young girl.

Down the block we had other good friends that we would visit on occasion. We met because the wife had crashed into our car on a winter night while turning a corner. That too is another story. Further down the block was another special place, but not in the way that you might think (not that I know what you are thinking). This was a transformational place. It was a community-based residential care facility or CBRF. The name of the place was GreenBriar. They housed people who needed help living. There were those who were either sickly, at the onset of Alzheimer's, dimensia, or put there because they had no family or their family couldn't care for their needs any more.

Every Wednesday, about one year before we moved to Wisconsin, we began visiting some of the residents. We did that as the result of some talks at our local church. We wanted to serve and love people and this was an opportunity close to our home. There were two men that I visited--funny I can't remember their names right now. One of them was a bomber pilot during WWII. He described his experience on those B-29s like this: "hours of absolute boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror." Another was a lonely man who longed for the day when he would return to his home in Carl Junction. He was a simple man--stereotypically Missourian (I are one). One had family who visited some; the other had family but felt abandoned by them.

I made boxes out of fine wood for them. I made paintings for them. I talked to them. I did what I could. I loved them with the little I had. I told them about Jesus. I told them what I understood about God at the time (they didn't know of course that God was taking me to school). They in turn, changed me. Life had dramatically affected them. Their loneliness and my weakness met and we communed with God together. That was several years ago now. I know that the WWII pilot died--his name was Bob, I remember now. The other man, I'm not sure. I inexcusably lost touch during our move (horrible part of a selfish heart). Now I'll probably never know. You see, the tornado completely destroyed GreenBriar.

When my wife and I looked at the pictures we were incredulous. We couldn't grasp the magnitude of the destruction. We didn't fully understood that the Joplin that we knew had simply vanished. So I grieve. I grieve at the loss of life, of memories that will fade over time, of the brief time that we spent there (our life is so short). But I am also learning to be thankful. We did have time there. We did touch lives and others profoundly changed ours. We will go back, not in a Douglas MacArthur fashion. I have skill in the trades. I've built homes before. I can do that stuff. We would go with our memories and try to help rebuild in some fashion our city.

Cabin Fever, 2011

The snow has been on the ground a long time. It's going to be gone by this weekend, though. And I now have cabin fever really bad. Lake Michigan is looking bluer and bluer. I'm like an animal in heat. I'm daydreaming about my flyrod, for crying out loud. If you've not fly-fished you have no idea to what I'm referring. Of course you could never find one of us fly-fishers around, because we're usually in our garage or basement fingering our gear, longing for some modest warm-up, or bent over our tying desks dreaming up new concoctions that we're sure will beguile even the most wily salmonid.

A question: I wonder how many really odd fly recipes there are that tyers have tied during the doldrums of winter? I think that I've probably tied, in my lifetime, about 20 original creations that sank right to the bottom immediately. Not because there was any weight on the shank. No, the fly was embarrassed at being created. I've got this monstrosity in my box. Imagine, a long-shank hook, olive chenille, palmered grizzly hackle, two huge goggle eyes, and a mustache. I keep it in there for desperate days.... Or to remember what I can become. Thank God I'm building a guitar, now.

Guitars and Missions

I've got this picture in my mind. Guitars and Missionaries. Synonymous? Maybe. The guitar, in my opinion, is a thing of natural beauty. Finely crafted, played with skillful hands, it projects something heavenly.

Missionaries are like that, especially those who forsake the comforts of this life--saying, no extra clothes, no i-pad, i-phone, i-whatever; taking only what could be put into a suitcase and go live life in another completely different culture to share a message of hope and love and salvation. So, missionaries (like my friends), are a lot like that guitar--a finely crafted instrument playing the sweet strains of another world for another world to hear. To my friends, I say, "Thank you. I can hear what you are playing and thank you for being willing to be played--sometimes to an unappreciative audience--to sacrifice, to love others. That's what love does."

This give me pause. How am I being played?

'37 Hauser

My winter project is to build a classical guitar for a friend. I have all the wood and am about to start making the forms and molds, various jigs and such--all the foofaraw that seems to go along with any sort of hobby that I undertake. Why can't I pick a seemingly innocuous hobby like stamp collecting, bird watching, or empire building? I fly-fish. Lots of gadgets there. Have you seen the vest of the average fly-fisherman, lately? Knot tiers. Fly dope to make your fly sink or float. Fly boxes. Forceps. Extra fly-line spools. Fly patch. Multitools. Hook removers. That's just in the top two pockets. At last count, I think I found 23 pockets for all of my stuff and I still need more.

Building a modern guitar is just as bad. You have the plantilla, the workboard, go-bar clamps, side-bending jig, circle-cutting jig, purfling jig, fretboard-slotting jig, fretboard template (in both metric and imperial), about 400 clamps (which will still not be enough), countless planes and chisels, not to mention trying to decide on the type tuning machines to use...I love it!

So for the next few months I'll be posting some pictures and describing the process (mistakes included) of what it takes to build a guitar in my basement here in Wisconsin.

Just a teaser:

Soundboard: German Spruce

Backs and Sides: East Indian rosewood

Neck: Spanish cedar

650mm scale length

Plans: Hauser '37--one of Segovia's favs.

Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Of Molinism and Compatibilism

I realized that I haven't posted for a long time. A lot has happened. I've a job. Not necessarily a career change, but it provides for what we need as a family. My youngest son is now 15 months old, communicating more and more, forming some beginnings of sentences (at least in his mind), pointing out objects, and saying "Wow!" as we look at the mountains of snow in our Wisconsin front yard. And as winters are very long here I have to confess that I have been doing a lot of reading--not a lot of thinking to process what I'm reading--just a lot of reading.

Short list?

Eusebius, a biography of Wycliffe, Calvin's institutes, and The Works of Jacobus Arminius. Perhaps the diet of seminary students but I think I want to be one someday. As I've continued reading I've had the beginnings of discussions with some friends over some coffee and I've been thinking that Christianity has within it its own spectrum of thought. On one side you have yer Calvinists and on t'other you got yer Arminians and right smack dab in the middle of both of them--almost as if they're trying to somehow meet and be somewhat in one mind and harmonious--you have these ideas of Compatibilism (soft-determinism) and Molinism (soft-something--I'm not sure what). Of course I'm in danger of oversimplification and going to incur the wrath of both camps. Nevertheless, the nuances that exist are remarkable. Both seek to reconcile the paradoxes of Scripture. I'm not even close to being able to figure them out. In fact, I think it's more confusing.

Oh well...